Bill Murray [Biography]

Bill Murray was born in Philadelphia in 1902, almost the same year as Wes Anderson [1964]. He joined the Communist party during the sunshine years…made a few leaflets, spoke of ‘foundation pits’, edited important people out of photographs…but renounced his membership while filming ‘Sullivan’s Travels’, where he played a newspaper.

[Huge gap]

In 1989, Murray made Ghostbusters 2, and was so scarred by the experience that he vowed never to work with ghost paintings again. Four years later he met Jim Jarmusch, and together they tried to make a time machine. However, Jarmusch had neither the talent nor the patience for regular physics let alone quantum, and the idea was abandoned. The next five years were spent on the fringes of a Black Hole, where he watched the Disney movie ‘The Black Hole’ on continuous loop, taking breaks only to tell the press there were no such things as black holes. In 2004 Murray returned to Earth and Jarmusch and made a film about coffee and smoking. In his personal life, Murray likes to make postcards and often turns up to student film nights as himself. Intellectually, the only question to ever stump him is: what is the most frightening way to die?

Note: between the years 1939 and 1978, Murray lost human form and became a concept. A few writers and philosophers [Rudy Wurlitzer, Barry Van Dyke, Spinoza the Third] wrestled with him as a concept, but didn’t make any kind of mark. Conceptually, Murray was slippery. When he returned to physicality…physicalness…physical…a human body, he took a year out to live in a cabin by the woods. Most of his time was spent locking himself in the basement and knocking against the floor, pretending to be the witch from Evil Dead 2. He has defended this ‘year’ in numerous interviews, claiming ‘it’s the only truly effective way to recover from what happened to me…going from person to concept and back to person again.’

Yes, you did. That movie hasn’t happened yet. It was released in 2003, but made in 2015. In three years it will phase out of existence so Sofia Coppola can have the idea to make it and then send it back in time for release, when the 2003 versions of us will see it and remember it again and continue under the fake-umbrella that it was made nine years ago.